New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama have skirmished with their first negative television ads of the election cycle, sparred through surrogates and ratcheted up their rhetoric. | Composite image by POLITICO

Obama, Clinton fight hard for Wis. win

MILWAUKEE –Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary here is just a way station before the critical March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries, but the campaigns aren't treating it that way.

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama are skirmishing with their first negative television ads of the election cycle, sparring through surrogates and ratcheting up their rhetoric.

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A Clinton spokesman on Sunday accused Obama of breaking a "pledge" to "take public financing in the general election if the Republican nominee agreed to do so as well." The Clinton campaign has also targeted Obama’s health care position in a tough mailer to Wisconsin voters that includes a quote charging him with "unscrupulous demagoguery" on the issue.

For its part, the Obama campaign enlisted the services of Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, a Democratic Party icon who supports Obama, to criticize Clinton's direct mail piece as similar to “the kind of distortion that we had back in 1994" when the Clinton administration health care reform package was defeated.

In a conference call Sunday, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, an Obama supporter, used the mailer to make a broader argument about the nature of Clinton's campaign in Wisconsin.

"I am also very troubled by this mailer," he said. "It represents how Senator Clinton has conducted her campaign in Wisconsin. Before she even came to the state she ran negative TV ads that distorted Senator Obama's record. She only arrived in the state yesterday. And now we have more of this stuff going on."

All of this is occurring in a state where both campaigns acknowledge Obama holds a slight advantage. Obama, powered by phenomenal fundraising and motivated by concerns about losing momentum as he heads into a tougher stretch of contests, has spent more time and money in the state than Clinton. He also leads in most polls.

Clinton isn’t exactly conceding Wisconsin, but her aides have sought to lower expectations. Their goal is to prevent Obama from running up the score like he did in last week’s Potomac primaries in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Clinton is seeking to avoid a repeat by targeting specific areas where her campaign believes her message resonates.

For Obama, victories in Wisconsin and in Hawaii – where he was raised and is expected to defeat Clinton in the other Tuesday contest of note– would give him 10 wins in a row. And it also would widen his narrow lead in the all-important race for delegates that will decide the party’s nomination.

Obama has added another day in Wisconsin to his schedule, while Clinton eliminated one from hers, so that she won’t be in the state on Tuesday. Instead, she’ll be in Ohio, which along with Texas has emerged as a firewall of sorts for her. The two states will allocate a combined 334 pledged delegates in their March 4 contests.

By contrast, Wisconsin has 74 delegates up for grabs Tuesday (Hawaii has 20), with delegates allocated proportionally both by congressional district and statewide vote.

According to an internal strategy memo accidentally emailed to reporters after Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, Obama's campaign privately predicted it would beat Clinton by seven percentage points and win 40 of the Wisconsin’s pledged delegates.

The campaign’s optimistic outlook can be traced in part to Wisconsin’s relatively sizable populations of college students, anti-war progressives, and affluent, well-educated professionals, as well as the large African American population in the state’s biggest city, Milwaukee. Another factor that plays to Obama’s advantage is the state’s open primary system, which allows independents and Republicans to cast votes for Democratic candidates.

Still, Wisconsin’s depressed manufacturing towns, struggling rural areas and its significant population of seniors suggest Clinton will be competitive.

Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political science professor, identified two potentially decisive battleground congressional districts. One is western Wisconsin’s 3rd district, which hugs the Mississippi River along the southwestern edge of the state. This district includes towns with small colleges, including Eau Claire and La Crosse, as well as a fast-growing pocket of affluent, cross-state commuters to the Twin Cities – both groups that seem to favor Obama. But that part of the state is dominated by rural areas and populated with dairy farms where Clinton’s increasingly populist-flavored message can be expected to gain traction.

Congressman Ron Kind, the Democrat who represents the district, told Politico that Obama’s campaign got a head start organizing there, but that "the Clinton campaign has really ramped it up in the last few weeks." Kind, who hasn’t endorsed either candidate, wouldn’t predict how his district would vote.